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Image via Flickr CC / Turinboy

How about writing and family and betrayal? This is too big. How about writing and ‘truthiness’ disclaimers? How about writing family without seeking permission? How about the slipperiness of story? How about accidentally changing memories by writing them? How about you remember the last remembrance, not the original memory? How about memories of photos, and remembering outside the frame? How about attempting to write beyond the frame? How about the idea that we’re not writing experimental nonfiction because we’re not really aware that other people are – we’re not aware enough of its existence? How about a ‘how about’ article – how about this list as essay? How about my NonfictioNOW paper – it’s probably too academic. How about a more accessible article about the difficulties of writing food and memory? Maybe that paper already is accessible. How about something based on my trip? How about Tall Poppies and the difficulties we have as Australians talking about ourselves and our own work without feeling some deeply internalised and fucked-up shame and terror that this ability to speak will make us unlikeable? How about a polemic about owning who you are and what you do? How about travelling and writing? How about the way that I felt entirely averse to writing down my experiences because their lived importance felt permanent and unforgettable, but then almost four weeks of this kind of living meant that it all blurred together and now I’m remembering through tweets and photos and ticket stubs? How about, going back to that idea of photos and decreased ability to remember outside the frame; how about the idea that all memory uses props? How about empty frames being more useful for memory because they don’t erase anything? Their emptiness creates room, rather than eliminating other possibilities and pushing anything less than certain out?